


The New Maybe

by azurejay (andchimeras)



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-15
Updated: 2008-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/azurejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick minds sneaking around with Ashlee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Maybe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [playfullips (dessertmeltdown)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dessertmeltdown/gifts).



Patrick never minded sneaking around with Victoria. It made a long, boring tour a little more exciting, gave him something to look forward to between shows and marathon production sessions with Gabe. It gave him a goal, a concrete reason to stay away from the camera crew: long pale legs and her brightest smile, a curled finger beckoning him into the dark behind the set, or locking an unused dressing room door.

It was good, it was fun, it was not serious; it was a lot of things he'd never let himself have before. He'd thought only complete assholes had flings on tour.

"You're not an asshole," she said, smoking beside an open window in the back lounge of the Cobra bus while they skipped another afterparty. It's possible they weren't very _good_ at the "sneaking" part of sneaking around.

"I feel like one," he said, his cheek on her hip.

She tugged on his hair and ran her fingernail lightly around the back of his neck, just inside the collar of his shirt. "_I'm_ not an asshole," she said, and he could hear her smile. "So obviously you're totally wrong."

"You know, I think--if I have a type at all, it's 'annoyingly reasonable,'" he mused.

Victoria laughed and said, "Probably the universe's way of making up for your heterosexual life partner."

Patrick hated it when everything he did was because of Pete, so he pinched her bare thigh and she tapped her cigarette out on her glass and rolled him over, pressing her shins across his biceps. She looked down at him imperiously, wrinkled yellow boyshorts and a purple t-shirt; her ponytail hanging over her shoulder, her hair stringy around her face, still damp from the show.

"You sure about that, mister?" she said, flushing, raising an eyebrow, her hands on her hips, little fingers just barely tucked beneath the elastic of her underwear.

He smiled up at her and pinched her again.

* * *

  
Across the crowded, loud club, Patrick watches Ashlee dancing on a table next to where Pete's DJing, both of them enthusiastically singing along to Bananarama, and he wants to be dancing beside her--but maybe on the floor--his hands on her lopsided hips, her thigh between his, her eyes closed, her face lost in the music. His fingers ache around his glass, damp from condensation.

Patrick minds sneaking around with Ashlee.

* * *

  
It's not that they _have_ to sneak around, except that they totally _do_ have to sneak around--around and between the press, their friends, her family, _Pete_.

At the regular Thursday band meeting, Patrick tells everybody he's going to be locked in his condo doing demos all day Friday and through until their awards show gig on Sunday. Pete declares Patrick Decaydance's Employee Of Forever and promises to buy him a hybrid Lamborghini for his birthday. Joe says the car should be metallic gold, and does spirit fingers. Patrick tells them both to fuck off.

He does work on a few things the next day, but that night, he takes Greek food to Ashlee's place and turns off his phone before they watch _Office Space_. They make out for an hour and talk about The Bangles for two and then they go to bed.

There's a Skeletor shirt hanging over her bedside lamp. She rolls her eyes fondly at it and chucks it in the laundry hamper.

"Oh, I'm going to be at the thing on Sunday too," she says. She drops her earrings and watch and bracelets in a little blue cloisonné bowl on her night table. "We should sit together."

"Haha, funny," Patrick says, in the middle of unbuttoning the plaid shirt he's wearing over his t-shirt.

"Seriously," she says, pulling her sweater over her head. "All three of us."

"You should sit on the end with Pete, same as always," he says. He remembers belatedly that he's wearing a Clandestine "Villain" shirt, and wants to kick himself in the face.

She sighs, "Whatever, fine," and steps out of her jeans. He toes his socks off and unbuckles his belt.

"No, no, that's my favourite part," she says, holding her hands out, making grabby hands. "Let me."

He finds himself blushing and smiling and letting her take his pants off for him, just like most nights they stay over.

* * *

  
The awards show performance goes pretty well, except that Joe breaks two strings and Patrick has to try to cover both parts for the last minute of "Thriller." It's not _that_ hard, but it sounds really shitty--chugging, it does not work so well with only one guitar--and he maybe misses a few words because he runs out of breath.

Pete charges his mike and yells, "Let's go!" at the end anyway, and most of the crowd claps and gets up and yells back anyway. Seriously, it will never not be weird for Patrick, seeing Lionel Richie give him a standing ovation.

They drink a bunch of water backstage afterwards, waiting for the commercial break so they can go back to their seats.

"This is what I get for selling out," Joe says sadly, fiddling with the broken strings. He'd done a print ad campaign for the company, and mentioned them twice in an interview.

"I don't know," Andy says. "Nike keeps sending me free clothes and nothing's fallen apart yet."

"_Yet_," Pete says. "They're waiting until we play the Grammys to send you the shitty stuff."

"You dared me to do that stupid video, shut up," Andy says.

Patrick ignores them, rubs his sore fingers together, and watches the show on the wall monitors. The camera pans the audience and there's Pharrell Williams and Jennifer Lopez and Cyndi Lauper. And Ashlee, sitting at the end of a set of four seat-fillers, Marie down at the other end, anonymous; like another seat-filler. Ashlee waves at the camera and smiles with her mouth open wide, goofy. She's got a big yellow ribbon in her black hair; she's wearing this green and yellow strappy dress and out on the red carpet the hemline had fluttered around her knees like--butterflies. Or something that's not a cliché.

"Dude," Pete says, suddenly beside him, quiet. "Commercial time, let's make a break," he says.

"Yeah," Patrick says. He pastes on a smile and Pete throws an arm around his shoulders.

"The lady awaits," he says, smiling a real smile.

Patrick makes a brief show of adjusting his tie and cuffs, tilting his hat so he looks snappy instead of tired and sweaty, and then they go back out in to the audience. The seat-fillers wander past them, away, and Pete pushes Joe and Andy to their seats and jostles Patrick in, and then Ashlee.

"Pete, no," Patrick says.

Ashlee smirks at him and squeezes his hand. "Don't be a killjoy, Lunchbox," she says.

"For real," Pete says. "Shut the fuck up and enjoy yourself. I'm going to have to pee halfway through the next thing anyway, better I'm on the aisle. Or, no, do you _want_ me to piss myself at the MAs? Honest question."

Patrick puts his face in his hands, because you can totally dress Pete up in a really nice black and purple pinstripe suit, and a shirt and faux snakeskin shoes the colour of that purple Muppet from Sesame Street, and straighten his hair and make him use hundred-dollar eyeliner, but he will always be the grotty kid who loves talking about bodily functions, expecially in public--especially when he knows it will embarrass the hell out of his best friend.

Ashlee laughs and on Patrick's other side, Andy says, "Pete, you do realize Shannon Tweed is like six feet away from you."

"Oh seriously?" Joe squeaks, and looks around.

* * *

  
There follows an interlude during which Patrick spends approximately nineteen hours a day working on the new Academy record. It's hard work, because their style doesn't really compliment his non-Fall Out Boy instincts. On the fourth day, Ashlee texts him to see if he's dead yet. He replies that he isn't, and asks her to remind him to kill Pete next time he wants Patrick to produce someone "for old times' sake."

"totes will, as sn as he waks up," she replies.

"Thx," Patrick types, and he's--glad--_glad_ that Ashlee isn't by herself while he's living on Hostess "food" products in the semi-dark of his den, like a music-producing rat.

A few minutes later, he's startled from the bassline of a bluesy ballad by his phone chiming. The screen reads: "miss u ♥ :)"

"U too," he sends back, struck by déjà vu--he's had this exchange with pretty much every girl he's tried to date while working on a record. He holds his phone and waits for the guilt trip, or the long list of reasons why he doesn't need to be working so hard.

"oh good ;)," is all she replies.

He blinks and types, "i love--" and it's only because he's really goddamn tired, okay, and he's beginning to wonder if Andy might actually have been right about getting cancer from eating Twinkies and Doritos for days on end.

A new message comes in before he can finish typing. It says, "pete sez get bk to werk. spoilsprt."

He clears his message and types, "patrick sez fuck off. c u guys later." He turns his phone off after he hits "send," and gets back to work.

* * *

  
They're back from a fly-by-night tour of South America. Andy is talking about moving to Costa Rica and Joe is tanned a pleasant light, nutty brown. They land in Miami; everyone but Patrick is catching a connector to Chicago tomorrow. Patrick is heading right back to LA, even though he misses his mom and decent pizza.

"See you next week," Pete says, and hugs him at the gate.

"Totally," Patrick says. "We'll maybe do some work?" He tries a sarcastic smile because they haven't written anything in months, and Pete nods and smirks.

"For sure," he says. "I'll e-mail you."

Which is not the problem. The problem is that Pete keeps sending him e-mails full of pithy one-liners on "forever one night stands" and "seeing the lying, cheating forest for the two-faced trees." Even though he can remember most of the metaphors and allusions coming up in conversations about their label, former friends, current grudges, Patrick can't help but think Pete is writing about him.

"Awesome," Patrick says, and tries to sound cheerful. "Looking forward to it."

Pete squints at him and pats his shoulders with both hands. "You're okay, right?"

"What? Yeah," Patrick says, admittedly not very convincingly.

Pete rolls his eyes. "Everything's all right with Ash--"

"I have to catch my plane," Patrick says, and runs away. Or, really, walks. Very quickly.

* * *

  
It's kind of like--this has been going on for just about six months. Patrick knew with his previous girlfriends that they needed a big deal to be made of the six-month thing. He knew it was important that all his friends knew his girlfriend came first. He knew he could say "my girlfriend" and people would know who he was talking about, and what he meant.

He thinks it's wrong to want to make a big deal out of the six months thing with Ashlee, because she's been with Pete for almost three years. He knows Ashlee and Pete come first for each other; he's not sure anymore who's first for him. He never says Ashlee's his girlfriend, because she's not, and Patrick is not her boyfriend. She is with Pete--those words belong to them.

Sometimes, he regrets saying yes when Ashlee asks him over, asks him out, asks him to listen to something she's writing, asks him to brush her hair, asks him to let her make him tea, because he thinks she should probably be doing these things with Pete and he doesn't understand why she wants to do them with him.

But then she says, "Seriously, Patrick, the tea is fair trade _organic_," and laughs at herself a little, draped over him on the couch, and he can't be sorry to have that.

* * *

  
Patrick tries to do something with the words Pete has sent him. At his desk, laptop open and glowing contentedly, he stares at the precisely pixelated letters:  


> touch eyes across the room because you cant touch hands  
> never noticed how many smiles a person could have

And, on the next page:  


> i was wrong: its worse knowing you know that i know

He carefully sets his guitar--still cold, unplayed--on its stand, and saves the words to his folder of unused lyrics.

Patrick works on many other things for about four days straight, does an appearance at a fine arts school, decides he would like to have a second career--or ninth, whatever--as a music teacher, and vetoes Pete's idea to found a fine arts school; his week is very busy. He e-mails Ashlee a few times, and texts with her when he can't sleep on Wednesday night, but he doesn't call her or go to her place--after the first night, whatever. He thinks he spends way too much time with her when Pete's out of town; he thinks he needs to not be so attached.

During his very busy week, he spends a lot of time half-wistfully remembering the years he wasn't so attached, when he had no one to worry or think about besides himself--and Pete sometimes, fine; trying to remember how he spent his time between Anna and Ashlee; alone; lonely.

* * *

  
The day before Pete gets back to LA, Patrick wakes up to an e-mail from him:  


> are you dead out there in west hollywood? talked to ash last nite/this morning, she said hearing my voice made her miss yours.
> 
> you were such a welladjusted kid, what happened to you pstump. put down the macbook, take some mylanta, and call the girl.

He rattles around in his condo for a few hours--organizing records and shoes; making and eating a pile of buttermilk pecan pancakes--before he shakes his head at himself and sits down and calls her.

"Of course you can come over," she says. "I'm glad you're not dead, asshat."

"Yeah, no, sorry. I suck," he says. "I'll be there around six."

Patrick loses his pants in the foyer, as sometimes happens, and Ashlee orders Thai and they watch five hours of Extras on DVD and she says something about accidentally dancing with Justin Timberlake at some club last week.

"Did you get his number?" Patrick asks, only half joking.

She wrinkles her nose. "Ugh. He's so _tall_."

Patrick just kind of squints at her and tilts his head, because she's awesome, don't get him wrong, but she's also really weird sometimes. Justin _Timberlake_, seriously.

Ashlee tilts her head and squints back at him.

"You only like me because I'm shorter than you," Patrick says.

She rolls her eyes and climbs over top of him on the couch, and yes, he does like it when the girl's on top.

"I like you," she says, leaning her face close, her bright red hair blocking out the rest of the world, "because you are _amazing_." He huffs a brief laugh and looks away from her. She takes his face in her hands and stares at him. "Me and Pete, we're the same, we're like peas in a pod, that's why we work--" Patrick holds himself very still, does not allow a flinch "--but you and me, we're like peas and carrots."

"Peas and carrots," he says.

She gives him a crooked half-smile. "Peas and carrots."

He maybe--he might like that, because: sure, he doesn't know anything about depression, or taking too many pills, or getting a tattoo; he and Ashlee are not the same, but still, they go together. His mouth is kind of dry, his heart is beating sweetly in his throat; he doesn't really know what to say. He says, "Orange is my favourite colour."

"I know," she says, her eyes bright and happy.

He tilts his face up so she'll kiss him, familiar and easy and with the barest edge of dirtiness.

She pulls back, sighing, smiling. She rubs her nose against his and adds, gently, "You're Pete's carrots too, you know."

That's just--Patrick squeezes his eyes shut, slides his hands under Ashlee's t-shirt and says, "Can we not--"

"Yes," she says, and props his glasses up on the brim of his hat, and kisses him again.

* * *

  
In the morning, Patrick wanders downstairs with a vague plan of making eggs Benedict. Or possibly waffles. He smells bacon, though, which is odd--

"Oh hey," Pete says, turning around from the stove, spatula in hand. "I didn't know you were here this morning." He grins.

Patrick blinks at him and feels decidedly naked, even though he's wearing boxers and a t-shirt. "Um," he says.

"Waffles or pancakes?" Pete asks, poking at the mix boxes on the counter.

"Uh," Patrick says. He pulls on the hem of his shirt, as if he can magically make it six inches longer.

"I bet Ashlee's hungry," Pete says, winking exaggeratedly, laughing, turning over the bacon.

"Shut _up_," Patrick says, because it is one thing for Pete to know Patrick is probably having sex with Pete's girlfriend, and entirely another fucking thing all together for Pete to actually, you know, be in the _house_ not even six hours after Patrick has had sex with Pete's girlfriend. And, what, making _jokes_ about it? Like it's _funny_? When Patrick hasn't even _showered_?

Pete raises his eyebrows. "Dude, are you okay?"

"_No_," Patrick says. Oh god. Pete came in the front door. Pete walked past Patrick's _pants_ in the _foyer_. "Holy shit," Patrick says. "I need to go."

"But the bacon--" Pete says, and follows Patrick as he walks through the living room, collecting his socks and sweater and hoodie. "The bacon is almost done. I was going to make eggs, too. Patrick--"

"I'm late," Patrick says, staring down at his jeans crumpled up on the tasteful oak floor of Ashlee's foyer, right beside Pete's shoes.

"For what?" Pete asks.

Patrick picks up his pants and puts them on. "I have a meeting," he says, grasping internally for something Pete will accept as important. "With the label. For work."

"Seriously?" Pete says.

"Yes," Patrick says. He buckles his belt and pulls his shoes on. "It's--vital."

"Vital?" Pete says, with a little smirk.

"_Yes_," Patrick says. "To me being allowed to do that. Project. Thing. I want to do."

"Patrick, man. It's Saturday," Pete says.

His hoodie only half on, Patrick looks at Pete. Pete's face scrunches up, all concerned and well-meaning, and Patrick--Patrick just needs to be away from here right fucking now. "No, really," he says, and Pete nods slowly.

"Okay," Pete says. He waves the spatula vaguely. "I'll tell Ashlee--"

"That I had a meeting, and I forgot," Patrick says. He takes his keys out of the little key box on the wall and opens the front door.

"I'm not going to lie to her, Patrick," Pete says, seriously, and Patrick should have known better than to ask.

Patrick wants to ask him, again, for the hundredth time, why he would share that, his devotion, the way Ashlee makes him feel. Patrick doesn't ask, he never does, because he doesn't want to put the thought in Pete's head. He doesn't want to not be allowed to share it anymore. He doesn't want Pete to turn around and ask why Patrick wants to share it.

He just--he loves Ashlee. He loves her with a weird ease of affection and friendship that he's never felt for a girl he was dating, but he knows--he's pretty sure--it's not like that for her. It's not about being in love with him, anyway, but that doesn't mean it's okay to lie to her.

"Yeah, I'm sorry," Patrick says. He rubs at his forehead with the back of his hand. "I'm really tired, man. I just--"

Pete nods slowly. "Sure," he says. "I'll think of something. Besides 'Patrick, hey, he's being an asshole today.'"

Patrick doesn't reply, even though he really, really wants to, because he deserves that. "Thanks," he says, instead, gritting his teeth, and leaves.

* * *

  
It's not always perfect, or even good. Patrick has seen Ashlee flip out worse than anyone he's ever known, even Pete. She reads something or somebody says something to her or she looks in a mirror the wrong way and suddenly she's manic, throwing out clothes and food and telling Patrick he doesn't _understand_, or she crawls into herself and won't talk to him at all.

The first time, he'd thought she was breaking up with him, but he did as she asked and the next day she called him in the afternoon and apologized and asked if he wanted to have coffee and talk. She explained to him that she's really kind of crazy, in the bad way, and said she was sorry for it exploding all over him randomly. He shrugged and told her he was used to it, that he could get used to the ways her crazy was different from Pete's.

This time, a few days after Pete's surprise breakfast-making, she's looking through the photos for an album cover and throwing sheet after glossy sheet in the trash. Patrick sits across the living room, working, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She rips a photo into pieces and puts her head in her hands.

Patrick takes his headphones off and sets aside his computer and kneels beside her. "Ash?" he says, and touches her shoulder. She shakes her head and curls her fingers, digging them into her forehead.

This doesn't happen a lot, or even often. It's just--always, no matter what sets her off or how she reacts, no matter what Patrick does or says or tries, she always ends up shaking her head and crying.

She says, like always, "Call Pete. Go away and call Pete. I'm sorry. Just _go away_."

"Yeah," he says, "yeah, okay." And he does as she asks, like always.

He waits for Pete in the foyer, like always, so that she's not really alone, and intellectually he knows it's just one of those things. There are some things Ashlee likes to do with him rather than Pete. There are some things she prefers to do with neither of them--shopping, hardcore clubbing, traveling by plane. He knows one person can't be all things to another, and that even two isn't necessarily good enough.

He just--he wishes it _was_. He wishes Pete was enough, so Patrick wouldn't have to be a part of this at all. Sometimes, secretly, in his most self-pitying, selfish moments, he wishes _he_ were enough.

* * *

  
Just about a week later, Patrick sees a picture of Ashlee wearing one of his hats on TMZ and, he can admit it, he freaks the fuck out.

"You can't do that, you can't do it," he says to her. "It's not cool, okay, seriously _not cool_."

She waves the hat in question around. "Yes, because this is the only white fedora with a green velvet band ever in the history of--millinery."

"Millinery?" he shouts. "What the fuck--"

"_Hat-making_," she yells back. "You are a freak, Patrick, a complete and utter control freak, you know that--"

"You stole my fucking hat," he says, throwing his arms in the air. "I think it's reasonable to expect some--"

"You left it at my house! You left it!" she says. "I thought it would be--cute. I don't know. I thought if somebody took a picture, you'd laugh."

"Because having my personal life ripped apart on the internet is my idea of fun," Patrick says. "Yeah, I think you're confusing your soulmate and your fuckbuddy, Ash."

She stares at him, her mouth open.

Patrick squints and shrugs. "Sorry, that was a little--"

"Yeah," Ashlee says. "It was."

"Sorry," Patrick says again, petulantly, because he had a _point_, goddammit.

"Whatever, you know, it's not like all you guys don't share clothes constantly, Jesus Christ." She tosses the hat at him.

He catches it and turns it around in his hands. "It's not the same," he says, quiet but resolute. He doesn't share clothes.

She nods, still looking pissed off and confused. "I guess not," she says.

* * *

  


> do you have a minute; i need to tell you youre a killer  
> i don't know who your victim is today--her, me, yourself, us  
> these days she smells like cigarettes and you.

Patrick moves Pete's e-mail to his unused lyrics folder without even reading the whole thing.

  
Patrick arrives at Ashlee's at around seven, with three pizzas and a six-pack of Fanta to tide them through a Muppet Show marathon.

He's a little surprised to let himself in to her house and find her on the couch in the living room, knitting, Pete wrapped around her waist.

"I'm supposed to--Ashlee asked me--" he says, lamely. She never mentioned it being a double--well, not a double date exactly, but.

"I know! We're watching the Muppet Show!" Pete says, grinning.

Patrick frowns and puts the pizza on the coffee table. "Guys," he says.

"I thought it would be fun with all of us," Ashlee says, smiling. "And this way I don't have to do it twice."

"Haha," Patrick says. "Seriously, this isn't _Cabaret_."

"What?" Pete says, sitting up. "Cabaret? What?"

"I changed my mind, I don't want to hang out tonight, sorry," Patrick says. "Keep the pizza."

"What the hell," Ashlee says. "We used to do shit like this all the _time_, Patrick."

"I don't want to be, whatever, the third wheel, okay," Patrick says.

"You're being an _idiot_," Ashlee says, and she sounds actually kind of angry. "A total fucking moron, Patrick Stump. Goddammit." She throws down her knitting and storms out of the room. Patrick is relieved she didn't throw the knitting at him. He knows from experience that the needles are very sharp.

"Seriously," Pete says. He's frowning really hard. He rubs his eyes and stares at Patrick.

Patrick swallows. "I don't--"

Pete says, "She's not cheating with permission or whatever you think." Patrick shakes his head and Pete waves his hand. Fierce, he adds, "This is not 'don't ask don't tell.' I want her to be happy, and seeing her happy with good people makes me happy, and when you're not being a total fucking moron, you are just about the best, most good person I fucking know, okay?"

"But," Patrick says, "before. Jeanae. Morgan."

"Fuck that," Pete says, with a dismissive hand-wave. "I'm over it."

"Over it?" Patrick says, disbelieving. "Over it? You punched in how many walls? How many windows? How many times did I have to listen to you screaming on the phone? You--you fucking kicked the shit out of that guy, after Morgan, and you sprained your goddamn hand and couldn't play for two weeks--"

"Dude, Patrick," Pete says. He holds his hands out, palms up, Patrick can see a stark white scar on his palm and can't remember how he got it. "It wasn't bad because they fucked other guys, okay. It was bad because of the lying and sneaking around and doing it to hurt me."

Oh.

"Oh," Patrick says.

Pete smiles a little and shrugs. "It's amazing how consent changes things."

"But it's not right," Patrick blurts. "It's not right." He feels like he's stealing from Pete, like he's withholding something from Ashlee; like he's ruining the good Pete and Ashlee do for each other. "You shouldn't have to share, the way you guys are, it's really--amazing, and you're actually _happy_; I'm sorry, I just--"

"So break up with her," Pete says.

It's not like the idea hasn't crossed his mind, but, "I don't--I don't want to hurt her."

"But all you are is her fuckbuddy, right?" Pete raises his eyebrows, and of course she told Pete he said that. Patrick recognizes his "devil's advocate" tone; Patrick fucking hates it when Pete acts like a lawyer. "Isn't that what you think?"

"I didn't mean--"

Pete rolls his eyes. "You totally did."

"Okay, fucking. Fine. I don't care if that's all I am to her, goddammit. I just feel this _way_ about her, and I can't _stop_\--"

"You're an idiot--"

Patrick points at him and spits, "Shut the fuck up, Pete. You guys--she asks me out, and you're all like, yeah, totally go out with my girlfriend, it'll be awesome, and--I didn't know, I _don't_ know how I'm supposed to act about it, I didn't know you were over all the traumatic shit that fucked you up for a good seven years, I didn't know it was _okay_, I just--obviously the way I think we should be acting is totally wrong, so." He flaps his arms angrily.

"You were doing fine," Pete says. "At first, for like the longest time, you were great. It's just the last couple of months you've been acting like some fucking pod person."

"Oh." Really?

Pete grins. "Like a goddamn freak of nature, Stump."

"Fuck you," Patrick says, but not very forcefully. He sits on Ashlee's couch and puts his head in his hands, not really thinking about anything.

After a minute, Pete sits beside him and leans his elbows on his thighs. Patrick can feel him staring. Patrick sighs.

"It's okay?" he says, quietly.

"Yeah," Pete says. "It's okay. Everything's okay."

"I'm in love with her," Patrick half-whispers.

Pete bumps their shoulders together and whispers in Patrick's ear, "So am I."

Patrick giggles, despite himself.

"It's so awesome, right?" Pete adds.

Patrick nods and exhales hard, like he's trying to expel all the stupid shit he's been thinking.

"I told you," Pete says. He puts his arm around Patrick's shoulders and tucks his head against Patrick's neck. "Will you stop being an asshole now?"

Patrick drops his hands and nods again and says, "Maybe."

Pete laughs.

"Hey," Ashlee says, and Patrick looks over at her standing on the stairs. Her face is pink and blotchy and her eyes are damp.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"For--" Pete prompts.

"For being an asshole," Patrick says.

Ashlee smiles, just a bit, like it hurts, and comes in to the living room. She sits on the coffee table in front of Patrick and Pete and looks at her hands.

"I think you need to--" she sniffs deeply and wipes at her eyes. "I think you need to think about this, away from me, away from _us_, okay, because--"

"No, no," Patrick says, "I'm fine, we talked--"

"Seriously," she says firmly.

"Ash," Pete whines. "He's okay--"

"You have a habit of talking him in to shit," she says to Pete, resolutely, firmly, "and he has a habit of letting you, so he needs to go home and think for himself."

She shrugs and adds, "We're keeping the pizza."

* * *

  
Which seemed cruel and unnecessary an hour ago, but now Patrick is in his bedroom, looking at his white fedora with the green velvet band, and he realizes Ashlee was right. Pete talked him into going out with Ashlee in the first place: talked over the couple of protests he made; talked around his concerns about being found out; talked about how much fun Patrick must've had sneaking around on tour with Victoria; about how much Ashlee liked him.

He talked enough to distract Patrick from his own inner voices for a while, but not forever. Even now, Patrick can hear them coming back--saying that yeah, sure, it's so awesome to be in love with a girl who wants you, and it's so awesome that her boyfriend is okay with that, but where's the future?

Where's the introducing her to his family? Where's the protracted cohabitation? Where's the major joint purchases--TV, furniture, car? Where's the thoughtfully considered engagement? Where's the wedding? Where's the house and kids?

He's never understood the logic of only dating people you'd actually marry, but neither does he understand dating people you _can't_ marry.

But maybe.

Patrick puts the hat away and pulls his MacBook out of his bedside table.

He opens up Garage Band and his unused lyrics folder and starts working.

* * *

  
He goes over to Ashlee's place the next day, and she just watches him, like she's waiting for him to do something awful and half-unexpected. They make small talk for a few minutes, and then:

"I love you, okay, you're not just a fuckbuddy, not _just_ anything. You're--kind of a little bit of everything," she says. She bites her lip and shrugs. "Does that help?"

He swallows. "Um," he says. "Yes. I--I love you too. I worked on some Fall Out Boy songs yesterday, it was good--"

"Patrick," she says, "are you seriously going to talk about work when, after we just--"

"--I haven't been able to look at Pete's writing in months," he says, and she stops talking. "I kept thinking it was about me, about you and me, and--obviously, sometimes it is, but it's not. It's not bad, it's just mixed in with all the bad shit that's happened before, that he's done before. None of the stuff about us is bad."

She smiles. "He's grown up a lot," she says.

He laughs. "Yeah, shocking." She laughs too.

"Could you--" she pats the couch beside her and he goes over, lets her arrange herself around him. She sighs. "I love you," she says, petting his arm and thigh and stomach. "I do, I love you." She says it over and over until he's lulled by it, until he slips his fingers into her hair and says it back every time she says it and then they fall asleep.

* * *

  
Patrick surfaces because his right side is cold and he has a crick in his neck and he can hear Ashlee and Pete whispering to each other nearby.

He opens one eye and there they are, sitting on the floor, across the coffee table from each other, eating leftover pizza. He closes his eye and listens, because of course they're talking about him.

"--I'd do if you'd broken up with him, or whatever," Pete is saying.

"We'd all live. You'd just be a big freak for like a year," Ashlee says.

Pete leans his cheek on his fist, elbow propped on his knee, and shakes his head. "It'd be my fault. And he'd hate me forever, eventually."

"You always say that," she says. "I think he knows all the things you think he should hate you for, okay. I think he doesn't care."

"Promise?" Pete says.

"Oh yeah, because that's totally within my power," Ashlee says, rolling her eyes.

"You are woman," Pete says. "And okay, look, if you guys broke up, you couldn't come on the road anymore. It'd fuck with his mojo."

"Would you shut up?" she says, reaching across the table to put her hand over his mouth. "We're not breaking up. Don't start being an asshole right when Patrick's stopped. Seriously. I'd have to kill you."

Patrick smiles involuntarily and Pete says, "Fucking faker, I totally knew you were awake!" Patrick opens his eyes and flips Pete off.

"God forbid you be caught sincerely communicating," Ashlee says. She pushes the pizza box closer to Patrick's side of the coffee table. "Want some, Lunchbox?"

"He hates cold pizza," Pete says.

Patrick takes a slice and bites into it enthusiastically. "Mmm," he says.

"I taught him the joys," Ashlee says, with a coy little smile.

Patrick blushes around his mouthful of pizza and Pete laughs so hard he falls over.

  
End.


End file.
